Aricles Annex - Xena: Warrior Princess Magazine Articles
Dreamwatch #32 (UK)
April 1997
pgs. 48-51
All Warrior Woman
by Carmen Carter
Xena is a very uncommon woman. Standing close to six feet tall, a striking beauty clad in leather and metal armour, she saunters through an ancient mythical landscape smiting her enemies with ruthless intensity. Her messianic fervour to save down-trodden peasants from the ravages of greedy warlords is fired by guilt and the need to atone for her past atrocities as a rampaging warrior.
Fortunately, despite her recent conversion to the side of Good, Xena still loves a rousing fight. Her glee in tackling a squadron of soldiers is almost as effective a weapoon as her trademark chakram, a sharp-edged disc that defies the laws of physics and gravity. Combining martial arts with a hint of super-mortal strength and prowess, Xena makes a formidable opponent who can kick-box her way through a mêlée or make a quick escape by somersaulting through the air into the saddie of her trusty mare, Argo.
The setting for Xena's adventures is supposedly ancient Greece, but the costumes and customs depicted on the show owe as much to Medieval England as they do to the Mediterranean. The lush, exotic scenery is provided courtesy of the New Zealand countryside where the series is filmed. Timelines shift with amazing fluidity, allowing Xena to confront Greek gods one week and Julius Caesar the next. And to further the sense of dislocation, the dialogue is deliberately contemporary and tongue-in-cheek, providing much of the humour which leavens the mayhem.
In an odd quirk of screen alchemy, these affectations only serve to enhance the basic strengths of the series, which are solid, dramatic storytelling and surprisingly good acting.
Xena is played with disarming flair by Lucy Lawless, a New Zealand actress who won her own spin-off show after a standout performance on HERCULES: THE LEGENDARY JOURNEYS.
BOTH HERCULES AND XENA ARE THE CREATIONS OF executive producers Sam Raimi and Robert Tapert, known for action-packed movie fare such as DARKMAN, THE QUICK AND THE DEAD, and THE EVIL DEAD. Tapert admits to having modelled Xena on the female superheroes found in Hong Kong fantasy/action films, and the concept has proved to be a wildly successful transplant to American soil. During the course of its first season, XENA: WARRIOR PRINCESS quickly moved up in the ratings to routinely rank third or fourth among syndicated action/adventure series, and one episode in early second season finally edged into first place, ahead of DEEP SPACE NINE and HERCULES.The Warrior Princess was the first installment in a three-episode story arc of HERCULES: THE LEGENDARY JOURNEYS that introduced Xena as the deliciously evil warrior princess who plots to kill Hercules as the initial step in her master plan to conquer nations.
However, it is the second episode of the trilogy that injects the hard, dark-edged tone that sets XENA apart from HERCULES, both as a character and as a series. In The Gauntlet the ruthless warrior balks at killing a baby, and that act of kindness undermines her authority, leading to the eventual mutiny of her army. There's only one way out of this outfit, and in a chilling display of her supematural endurance and iron determination, Xena survives a gruelling passage through a gauntlet of her own warriors. Exiled, she eventually joins forces with Hercules and fights against her own men.
Unchained Heart chronicles Xena's first hesitant attempts to make amends for her past, the necessary moral reformation for a hero about to embark on her own series. Even the best of intentions don't lead to a facile and quick resolution of Xena's guilt. The hard road she faces is outlined in ' of the Past, the premiere episode of XENA: WARRIOR PRINCESS. Xena attempts a return home to Amphipolous, only to find that her reputation as a warlord is not so easily overcome. Even her own mother doubts the sincerity of her conversion, and the local villagers are more interested in stoning her to death than in listening to her advice on how to deal with an advancing army.
Enter Gabrielle, who quickly talks the villagers into submission. This engaging young woman, played by the versatile Renée O'Connor, has run away from home to escape an engagement to her "dull and stupid" fiancé and seek a life of adventure. With dogged persistence, Gabrielle persuades the sceptical Xena to accept her as a travelling companion.
It's the start of a beautiful friendship. With Gabrielle playing Everywoman to Xena's Mythic Hero, these two women begin a walking tour of mythology, albeit one that is somewhat twisted to appeal to modern sensibilities. Ares, god of war, appears as a smooth-talking Lothario dressed in black leather who tries to seduce Xena into returning to her warrior ways. In contrast, Hades is the preppy god of the Underworld, somewhat petulant and peevish about his need to call on Xena's help to free Death from imprisonment. If not for Xena's intercession, the centaurs and the Amazons would have gone to war, and by the second season she's even lending David a helping hand to kill Goliath.
AS IS OBVIOUS VERY SOON, YOU CAN'T EXPECT chronological consistency or mythological accuracy in Xena's world. But don't worry, you won't miss them. The vaguely defined Golden Age of Myth merely serves as a convenient and colourful backdrop for the adventure of human drama.At first glance the casual viewer might mistake XENA: WARRIOR PRINCESS for an episodic series like the original STAR TREK, where each instaliment is a self-contained story. However, there are two distinct yet intertwined story arcs running through all the episodes: Xena's gradual reclaiming of her humanity and Gabrielle's increasing maturity. Both characters are developed with a consistency and subtlety that adds unusual depth to the series when viewed as a whole.
In the opening scene of Sins of the Past, Xena rides past the burnt shell of a farm with only one surviving inhabitant, a young boy who pleads for food. She gruffly refuses him until she learns he was orphaned by her attack on his village. When she tosses him a parcel of bread it is a gesture born of guilt rather than generosity. In the same vein, her early interactions with the irrepressible Gabrielle are tinged with impatience and exasperation. And despite her frequent admonition of "Be nice", whispered seductively in the ear of the thug-of-the-week who she has thoroughly incapacitated, Xena is frequently sardonic and surly.
The show's writers have resisted the temptation to ease away these rough edges too soon. With just a twitch of her jaw or the hooding of her eyes, Lawless conveys the sense that Xena's warrior rage always hovers just below the surface of her stoic facade. To underscore this sense of danger, the warrior princess experiences occasional backsliding on her journey to atonement, usually when someone is stupid enough to make her really angry or to mistake her iron control for passivity. Not a good idea. When Xena loses control of her temper she has a tendency to brandish her sword and yell things like "Take the village! Kill them all!"
Neither have the writers whitewashed her background to garner more sympathy for the main character. Although her commitment to good deeds is the main focus from week to week, there is also the occasional reminder that Xena's burden of guilt is well-deserved and that she has a great deal of evil to atone for.
Dreamworker, arguably the best episode of the first season, plunges Xena into a psychic dreamscape where she comes face to face with the hosts of warriors and innocent villagers she has killed. Even after she has succeeded in dispelling those ghosts, she is confronted with the part of herself which still revels in the memories of blood lust and power. Meanwhile, Gabrielle has been abducted by the acolytes of Morpheus and is busy talking her way through a series of trials designed to force her to spill blood for the first time. Xena's almost desperate determination to reach the young woman in time to save her blood innocence underscores the warrior's anguish over her past misdeeds.
This theme of guilt is hit with even greater force near the end of the season in two loosely-tied episodes. When Xena is incapacitated by paralysis in The Greater Good, she impatiently dismisses concern over her deteriorating condition. Her first commitment is to mounting a defense to protect helpless villagers from imminent attack. "People like this used to be my victims," she tells Gabrielle. "I keep that in mind every time we come up against a warlord like Talmadeus. It's the greater good. Remember that."
The payback for her sins against the innocent arrives in the riveting Callisto. Xena's most formidable opponent is a psychotic blonde whose family was burned alive by Xena's army. "You made me," purrs Callisto as she sets out to systematically destroy Xena's reputation and her life. The warrior princess is all too aware of the truth in this statement and that knowledge undermines her ability to subdue her enemy. And her merciful decision to spare Callisto's life leads to serious consequences in the second season story arc.
During all these struggles for redemption, Gabrielle serves as Xena's moral touchstone. Time after time, Gabrielle's unwavering faith in Xena's goodness pulls the warrior back from the precipice of rage or despair. Although Xena may serve as mentor when it comes to leaming how to wield a staff or duck an arrow, her companion is an eloquent teacher of the virtues of love and compassion.
As proof of their year-long spiritual journey, Xena displays gentleness and deep compassion while treating the casualties of a civil war in Is There A Doctor In The House?, the final aired episode of first season; and Gabrielle, who has adopted a code of non-violence, nearly pays for her philosophy with her life. Xena's transformation, and Gabrielle's from chatty comic side-kick to travelling bard, is utterly convincing because it has been crafted so patiently and subtly from episode to episode.
HAVING ESTABLISHED A WINNING FORMULA IN ITS first season, XENA: WARRIOR PRINCESS does not play it safe and cover the same ground in second season. There has been a move toward more whimsical episodes such as Girls Just Wanna Have Fun, a Halloween special with Oriental vampires, or Warrior... Princess...Tramp, in which Lucy Lawless plays Xena and two lookalikes. An even more noticeable change is the introduction of the bumbling, incompetent Joxer as a recurring comic character played by Ted Raimi (formerly of SEAQUEST DSV). Yet the more frequent comedies have not overshadowed the dramatic episodes, which still remain the highlight of the series.Xena is granted a certain degree of inner peace at the conclusion of Remember Nothing when she sees the impact her conversion has made on the lives of everyone around her and how different the world would be if she had never picked up the sword. That composure is soon shattered in Return of Callisto when Xena confronts her worst enemy once again and finds there are no easy solutions to righting past wrongs. New actions lead to new guilt, an emotional weakness that Callisto is all too willing to exploit for several episodes to come.
Unfortunately, the structure of the second season story arc was badly disrupted by a mischance off the set. In the course of filming a promotional sketch for a TONIGHT SHOW interview, Lucy Lawless was thrown from a horse and fractured her pelvis. The disruption affected at least a half-dozen mid-season episodes. Fortunately for viewers, the writers of the show displayed clever ingenuity in accounting for Xena's disappearance, so ultimately the incident may serve as nothing more than a curious footnote in the history of what promises to be a long-running and extremely successful show.
| Return Links | ||
| Articles Annex Main Page (Xena articles) |
your previous page | |